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Orange’s fibre reaches 6 million customers in France

Annie Turner
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Orange’s fibre reaches 6 million customers in France

Every day, the operator’s teams connect close to 10,000 customers

At the end of 2021, using its own funds and in partnership with local authorities, Orange had deployed fibre to 63% of the 29 million premises eligible for FTTH in France.

This is a 20% increase in the number of premises reached in one year – with the critical importance of good, reliable connectivity underlined by the pandemic. Orange’s boast that France “is now Europe’s leading country for fibre” does not bear scrutiny, however.

Certainly, it is streets ahead of the laggards that are also Europe’s biggest economies, like Germany, Italy and the UK, according to the latest figure from the Fibre Council Europe (which admittedly are from September 2020), and well behind the Spain and many of the smaller countries, geographically as well as economically speaking.


Fabienne Dulac, CEO of Orange France says, “This result reflects the full mobilization of all the Orange France technical and sales teams and those of its partners across all our regions. Over half of all Orange internet customers in France now enjoy fibre in the home or in their place of work. This success is based on our position as the leader in the deployment and our ability to connect 10,000 customers every day.”

In 2022, Orange will continue to work in all the zones where it is responsible for the fibre deployment, both in highly populated zones and AMII zones. In AMII (call for expression of investment interest) zones, with over 11 million connectable households at the end of 2021, Orange exceeded the initial target, based on the INSEE database.

Orange’s outgoing Chairman and CEO, Stéphane Richard, said: “Orange and France gambled on optical fiber over ten years ago now…Every day, our employees and partners help to build the network we will use for the next 50 years.”
 

Telecom Italia shares tank as KKR takeover stalls

Nick Booth
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0
Telecom Italia shares tank as KKR takeover stalls

Markets don’t like uncertainty and TIM is paralysed by indecision

Telecom Italia (TIM) shares fell for a straight second day on Wednesday following an internal meeting about plans to revamp the former phone monopoly. The indecision has not inspired confidence since a takeover approach by US private equity company KKR remains unanswered, reports Reuters.

However, once general manager Pietro Labriola had outlined to TIM’s directors the alternative options to KKR’s €10.8 billion euro offer, the board’s response had been positive, Reuter’s sources say.

Stock fell two days running

This was not necessarily good for TIM’s stock however. Reports about a positive reception of Labriola’s plan has actually weakened the speculative appeal of TIM shares, as a consequence of  the uncertainty on whether KKR will act on its takeover proposal.

“The daily bulletin of events, rumours and scenario permutations, and the combination of uncertainty on management and board orientation, along with political interference, makes investors understandably nervous,” said one Banca Akros analyst.

TIM shares were 3.7 per cent lower by mid day on Wednesday and the stock has been decimated since the beginning of the week. Labriola’s standalone plan for TIM is to separate the group’s infrastructure assets from its services operations.

“Should TIM’s board approve Labriola’s split proposal, at the same time it could reject KKR’s non-binding offer,” said Intesa Sanpaolo’s research note.

Labriola coronation is Friday

Labriola is expected to be named chief executive on Friday. If appointed he will put his plan to the board on March the second. The CEO-in-waiting is backed by TIM’s single largest investor Vivendi. Vivendi has opposed KKR’s offer on the grounds that it undervalues TIM shares. If TIM accepted the KKR share estimate then Vivendi’s own stake will have halved in value.

Meanwhile, Vivendi is investing in digital communication group Progressif Media through the purchase of a 8.5 per cent stake from ZeWatchers. The financial terms of this deal were not disclosed. ZeWatchers will own a 30 over cent stake in the company while the three Progressif Media founders, Emile Duport, David Bonhomme and Thomas Ghys, will retain 60 per cent of the company.

 

 

Türk Telekom hails 2Gbps Wi-Fi 6 trial, WBA looks to Wi-Fi 7

Annie Turner
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0
Türk Telekom hails 2Gbps Wi-Fi 6 trial, WBA looks to Wi-Fi 7

Wireless Broadband Association (WBA) says trial shows potential of high speed, low latency connectivity in 6GHz band

Turk Telekom says it has successfully completed Wi-Fi 6E trials designed to demonstrate how the tech improves speed and capacity in different end-user scenarios.

Türk Telekom CTO Yusuf Kıraç said, “As the first operator to trial the Wi-Fi 6E solution in Turkey, we were able to achieve a connection speed of 2 Gbps and above with low latency in the tests we conducted in the test laboratory established at Türk Telekom’s Istanbul Acıbadem campus.

These speeds…will enable many applications with the concept of smart office, health, entertainment, security and smart home to be used without any problems.

“Thanks to the Wi-Fi 6E solution, which we will combine with Türk Telekom’s widespread and high-capacity fibre power, we will ensure the widespread use of low-latency high-capacity services in homes and offices.”

Biggest Wi-Fi footprint

The operator has the largest Wi-Fi footprint in the region spanning residential, enterprise and public space applications.
 
The trial was carried out in partnership with Broadcom and Intel as part of a WBA trials programme in December.
 
Tests were carried out in a closed lab and over a live internet network and orchestrated using a router configured with Broadcom’s Wi-Fi 6E evaluation platform.

Various clients were connected to that platform, using Intel’s AX210 160 MHz Wi-Fi 6E card to make the whole spectrum was available.
 
According to the WBA, the trial proved that by opening the full 6 GHz spectrum, it is possible to future proof Turkey’s wireless broadband capabilities in the short term with Wi-Fi 6E, and also lay the groundwork for Wi-Fi 7 to provide digitally immersive services for education, manufacturing, entertainment and more.

Vodafone switches on Britain’s first 5G OpenRAN site in the city of Bath

Nick Booth
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0
Vodafone switches on Britain’s first 5G OpenRAN site in the city of Bath

UK’s first 5G OpenRAN site and first carriage of live traffic on macro site

Vodafone UK has switched on the UK’s first open radio access network for 5G mobiles (5G OpenRAN) – in the West Country city of Bath. The operator says it will now expedite the development of ecosystem of 2,500 5G and 4G OpenRAN sites.

The site in Bath is the first of 2,500 5G and 4G OpenRAN sites that Vodafone has committed to. Sadly, technical details of Britain’s debut installation are not given. Yesterday Telefónica Germany detailed the exact building facade on the Klenzestrasse in Munich’s Gaertnerplatzn that hosts its first small cell equipment.

Vodafone says it has championed the OpenRAN approach to building mobile networks ever since the idea was conceived in 2016. It says it is actively taking the OpenRAN approach to networking in many parts of the UK, despite the added complexity and integration involved in diversifying the number of suppliers.

Record of historic video call

To celebrate the event Andrea Dona, Vodafone UK’s chief network officer made a video call to Julia Lopez, the UK’s digital infrastructure minister. “This is the beginning of a new chapter for the mobile industry. Our team has been working tirelessly to take OpenRAN technology from a theory in our lab to our customers in the real-world – it’s remarkable how much has been achieved in such a short period of time,” said Dona.

“This phone call, the first in the UK to be made using 5G OpenRAN infrastructure, marks a big step forward for innovation in UK telecoms,” said infrastructure minister Lopez. The installation of equipment at the site is the start of what Vodafone claims is the first scaled OpenRAN project in Europe, with 2,500 sites committed by 2027. It is the first 5G OpenRAN site in the UK and the first time OpenRAN technology has been deployed on a UK macro site to carry live customer traffic.

Telefonica Germany is now building 5G Open RAN, starting in Munich

Nick Booth
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Telefonica Germany is now building 5G Open RAN, starting in Munich

Small cells in Munich will become Bavarian blueprint for national 5G

Telefonica Germany has activated its first small cell network with Open RAN technology in Munich’s influential Isarvorstadt quarter. The telco is hoping that the Bavarian trend setters will help this small cell fashion to sweep the nation. 

Germany’s number two mobile operator claims the new technology will give customers broadband grade service, with its 4G signals shifting data at up to 100 Mbps. 

The small cells network will be connected to fibre backhaul for all roll outs across the country. In Munich, Telefonica has employed the skills local utility company Stadtwerke Muenchen and operator M-net to connect the cells to fibre. 

Small cells create mighty networks 

TG’s mini radio cells have been placed on the building facade of the Klenzestrasse, in Munich’s Gaertnerplatz neighbourhood. These small cells of Open RAN will supplement the amalgamated 4G/5G mobile network kit installed on roofs across this inner-city area, . 

In the next three weeks Telefonica will install more small cells in the famous downtown area of the Bavarian capital. The dispensation of small cells will start with two 4G radios on the Gaertnerplatz, the central square in the city hippest quarter, the Isarvorstadt district. The technology will fan out with the installation of pure 5G Open RAN small cells (5G standalone) across the iconic German city. 

Munchen is blueprint for Open RAN

The method has yet to be confirmed by the RAN builders but it’s thought that Telefonica Germany company may use the existing infrastructure of Stadtwerke Munchen to support the deployment. The München Projekt will be the blue print for replication in other large cities in Germany.

In a release Telefonica said it expects the technology to help it complement its 5G/4G capacities over the O2 network at high-traffic locations in urban areas. 

Liberian government’s new mobile network goes live

Annie Turner
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0
Liberian government’s new mobile network goes live

President George Weah (pictured) to launch the rebranded Libtelco’s network today

The newly named Liberia Telecommunications Corporation Mobile (LTC Mobile) will carry the first phone call, made by President Weah.

LTC Mobile, which is owned by the Government, says the intention is not to put existing service providers – Lonestar Cell MTN and Orange Liberia (formerly Cellcom) – out of business but rather to fill gaps in coverage.

Regional aspirations

Much of Liberia’s infrastructure was destroyed by a decade of civil war, hence its communications infrastructure is largely mobile, according to a report by BuddeComm, published in August 2020.

LTC Mobile’s management added that President Weah’s vision is to make LTC a viable telco in the sub-region that is comparable with MTN, which is owned by the South African government, or Orange which is owned by the French government and Vodacom which is owned by the UK government, according to a report in Front Page Africa.

In fact, the French government only has a 23% shareholding in France. Vodafone is not owned by the UK government and MTN Group is not owned by the South African government, although it had assistance from the South African government when it started out in South African as M-cell in 1995.

The LTC management is also keen to dismiss “the misconception that the LTC mobile will be playing the role of a regulator and the same time a player since it’s government owned”.

Potential effectiveness

The Liberia Telecommunications Authority will continue with its responsibility for regulation of the sector.

The Liberia Telecommunications Corporation (LTC) was established in 1973 as the sole fixed line telephone operator in Liberia.

After the Telecommunications Act of 2007, the Corporation became LIBTELCO and was designated as Liberia’s national telecommunications operator. It has been operating a CDMA 2000 1X-EVDO network that provides affordable voice and data services in Liberia.

The Act of 2007 was updated in October 2021 permit the company to build a GSM network. BuddeComm noted, “though its potential effectiveness as a competitor to MTN and Orange is doubtful”.
 
 

Telefónica sells part of copper network to Macquarie to raise cash

Annie Turner
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0
Telefónica sells part of copper network to Macquarie to raise cash

Macquarie Capital is the majority shareholder in Spain’s independent fibre wholesale firm Onivia

Telefónica is selling part of its outdated copper phone and ADSL infrastructure to Macquarie for €200 million, reports the financial newspaper CincoDias.
 
The Spanish operator has been divesting itself of assets to pay off its mountain of debt over several years. Through this divestment, its debts have fallen from €36.7 billion at the end of 2019 to €22 billion last September.

Best big country fibre

Among Europe’s geographically large countries, Spain has highest fibre penetration with Telefónica providing fibre broadband to about 4.8 million premises.
 
The company plans to shut down its entire copper-based infrastructure by by 2025: at the end of September, Telefónica had 1.1 million ADSL lines still in use.
 
Last August, the operator announced the closure of 1,000 copper plants in the first half of this, which is equivalent to dismantling about 65,000 tons of copper.
 
CincoDias says the transaction with Macquarie has boosted this decommissioning and dismantling process.
 
In addition to being able to sell the copper, Telefónica also makes significant savings in energy consumption and operational efficiency with FTTH.
 
Macquarie, the Australian giant, is the largest shareholder of the wholesale operator Onivia, with a fiber network that reaches 2.1 million homes through a network of 8,400 km.
 
Macquarie will acquire Telefónica’s copper network directly, not through its subsidiary.

Creating Onivia

Onivia was created in 2020, when Macquarie Capital – as the majority shareholder – and Aberdeen Standard Investments bought part of the Spanish MásMóvil fibre network which reached 940,000 homes at the end of 2019.
 
Macquarie described Onivia as Spain’s first independent fibre network operator.
 
In May 2021, Japan’s Daiwa Energy & Infrastructure (DEI) became an investor in Onivia, which acquired a majority stake in a large rural FTTH network from MásMóvil for almost €400 million, doubling Onivia’s network coverage to 2.1 million homes, urban and rural.
 
Under the terms of this second transaction, MásMóvil is the network’s technological partner, responsible for deployments to new locations as well as the operation and management of the infrastructure it sold. MásMóvil also retains ownership of the relationship with existing customers.
 
Orange Spain is another anchor customer on the Onivia network.
 
The regional cable operators are owned by Vodafone or MásMóvil, and the latter acquired the Basque part of the Euskaltel cable network last August.
 
 

Telefónica Tech and Grupo Álava offer predictive maintenance for industry

Nick Booth
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0
Telefónica Tech and Grupo Álava offer predictive maintenance for industry

Digital Nostradamus on edge foretells disasters, using LTE and 5G infrastructure, so they can be avoided.

Telefónica Tech and Grupo Álava are collaborating on a predictive maintenance system for industry that promises to analyse data, spot problems and authorise timely interventions. 

The digital Nostradamus is being fed with data on the most expensive machinery used in manufacturing and processing, such as rotary engines, reciprocating machinery and electrical transformers, in order to learn their nuances.

Telefonica Tech says this ‘advanced data platform’ will then be used by its machine learning management systems to optimise the activity of their machines, coaxing the best performance out of powerloaders, directing an excavator and predicting when a weaving machine may be headed for a breakdown. 

Nostradamus predicts Industry 4.0 

The predictive maintenance programme will be orchestrated over Telefónica Tech’s LTE and 5G mobile networks, which will store and process all the intelligence gathered by sensors and monitoring systems locally, using Industrial Edge Computing technology.

The network will need to cope with huge volumes of data created by various types of Artificial Intelligence (namely machine learning) and processed in Big Data analyses. Network slices will prioritise the more timely traffic, such as urgent instructions to machinery that needs to take instant action.

See demo at Telefónica’s innovation centre

The complexities are being tackled by developers from Telefónica Tech and Grupo Álava, whose demo is currently available at the Telefónica District Innovation Centre in Madrid.

The formal agreement on collaboration with Grupo Álava will help Telefónica Tech to use 5G, IoT, Edge Computing and Big Data technologies to orchestrate more sustainable and resilient industrial activity, said Andrés Escribano, Director of New Business and Industry 4.0 at Telefónica Tech.

The upshot of predictive maintenance will be lower costs, less waste and better product quality, said Yago Sanchez, Director of Alliances at Grupo Álava. 

Engie to convert Orange’s data centres to solar power across Middle East and Africa

Nick Booth
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Engie to convert Orange’s data centres to solar power across Middle East and Africa

Solar panels and solar farms will cut the carbon footprint of all 18 divisions of the Groupement Orange Services (GOS)

Orange has contracted Engie to convert all 18 of the Middle Eastern and African subsidiaries within its GOS Group to solar power. In some cases it could provide 60 per cent of a data centre’s during daytime hours.  

The Groupement Orange Services (GOS) pools all the resources of Orange’s Middle East and Africa (OMEA) subsidiaries so they can share hosting and infrastructure, operational expertise, services and IT.

Now GOS group members are to benefit from an installed capacity of 355 kWp, which will be collectively generated by new solar panels on their rooftops and solar carports.

Cut the carbon footprint

The mission is to cut the telco group’s environmental footprint, minimise the reliance on commercial electricity from non-renewable sources and avoid using generators that burn diesel and other fossil fuels. Commissioning is scheduled for the second half of 2022. Engie is to provide a managed service.

This plant will comprise 784 of the latest photovoltaic cells which should provide the data centre with around 527 MWh/year of renewable energy.

The plant is designed to work for seven days a week in self-consumption mode, with the data centre being directly powered by the sun. Solar power should provide around 60 per cent of the data centre’s electricity between the hours of 7 am to 6 pm.

Renewable energy action plan

The GOS solar scheme dovetails with the plan adopted by the Government of the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire, which aims to make the country an energy hub for its sub-region of Africa. Its target is to provide 42 per cent of its energy to the hub from renewable sources.

“This project is a first in West Africa for Orange in terms of its size and scope,” said Alioune Ndiaye, the CEO of Orange Middle East and Africa, “it perfectly illustrates our ambition to speed up our solar projects in order to achieve net zero carbon by 2040.”

Orange goes further

Orange has already run several schemes, having equipped 5,400 telecoms sites with solar panels and built solar farms in Jordan and Mali. “We will go further,” said Ndiaye.

“Engie Africa is active in electricity production, energy services and decentralised solutions for off-grid customers across the continent and we are proud to support the GOS in its energy transition,” said Armand Seya, CEO of Engie Services West Africa.

Telenor to sell its Digital Money stake in Myanmar for $53 million 

Nick Booth
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0
Telenor to sell its Digital Money stake in Myanmar for $53 million 

Is it selling to concentrate on the domestic league with Google Cloud?

Telenor Group has announced  an agreement under which the Norwegian mobile operator will sell its 51 per cent share of Digital Money Myanmar Limited to a subsidiary of Yoma Strategic for $53 million.

On conclusion of the sale, Yoma Strategic will become the controlling shareholder of Wave Money, a provider of money transfer and digital payments in Myanmar. The agreement between Yoma Strategic and Telenor Group completes a divestment process that was announced in June 2020. Though the transaction is subject to regulatory approval from the Myanmar Central Bank, that is thought to be a formality.

Massive wave of digital money

The company was a joint venture in 2016 after fintech pioneer Yoma was granted a license under Myanmar’s new Mobile Financial Services Regulation. By 2020 Wave Money was processing $8.7 billion a year in remittance and payments, roughly 12 percent of Myanmar’s GDP. The company runs a network of more than 45,000 active agents AKA Wave Shops in urban and rural areas in 295 of the 330 townships nationwide. The business has seen a significant recovery in volumes since June 2021 with the trend expected to continue.

Melvyn Pun, CEO of Yoma Strategic, said the digitisation of the Myanmar economy, in particular in financial services, has been remarkable for Myanmar. “We are pleased that Wave Money has positively transformed the way of life of people in Myanmar, bringing financial inclusion to the masses,” said Pun.

Why is Telenor waving goodbye to money?

Wave Money played a critical role in Myanmar’s financial service industry and te money supply after ordinary banking services were disrupted following the military’s seizure of power on Feb. 1, 2021, according to AP News.

Telenor has been seeking to withdraw from Myanmar since then, but it has so far not finalized a planned sale of its mobile phone networks, announced in July 2021, to the M1 Group, a Lebanese-based investment firm.

Telenor wrote off the value of its Myanmar business after the military takeover ignited a public backlash and the authorities imposed limits on mobile and internet access, says AP News.

Telenor is proud of its work in Myanmar 

“Telenor is proud to have been part of Wave Money’s journey to empower the people of Myanmar with access to financial services,” said Lars Erik Tellmann, head of Telenor Group’s financial services, “we are confident that Yoma [can] take Wave Money to the next level financial inclusion.”

In Asia Telenor is in the middle of major consolidation, according to analyst John Strand, founder of Strand Consult, who said that few policy makers understand consolidation and its benefits. 

Telenor to concentrate on reshaping

Meanwhile Telenor has to build an infrastructure for 5G. The telco is moving its IT systems to Google Cloud, using the hyperscaler’s artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools to get insights from its data, and developing new solutions, cloud specialist Danielle Royston, CEO of TelcoDR, told Mobile Europe in December. “I presume Telenor will be making the most of Google Cloud talent to deliver on this last point. It’ll be interesting to see how Telenor’s cloud transformation unfolds and how quickly.”

 

 

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